The truly remarkable feature of the poll tax was the amount of evasion. It was astonishing. Spinsters, grown-up children, apprentices, servants, mysteriously vanished from households all over the land. Cottages suddenly fell empty. In some areas, with the collusion of local collectors, entire villages simply disappeared. If one believed the returns, it would seem that the Black Death had just struck again. About a third of the population of England was missing.
Would Fleming try to conceal Amy, the boy wondered? It was too late for the grocer to try to hide his apprentice. And how much would they demand? Though the poorest peasants were only assessed a groat – a day or two’s pay for most of them – many merchants in London were being charged a whole pound or more. Would Dame Barnikel be assessed as a wife or as an independent trader?
But the one thing he had not expected was that Fleming, looking very pale, should, after much hesitation confess: “I can’t pay. I’ve no money.” And when the collectors had laughed and told him to try another story, the shaken grocer had gone to his strongbox in the store and returned with only half a mark. At which point Ducket at least, staring at his master’s face, realized that he was speaking the truth. The grocer was destitute.
“But how?” Dame Barnikel was too concerned to be angry. She had paid the poll tax, which had amounted to two marks, and now, in the privacy of their bedchamber, she was gazing at him in puzzlement.
“Trade’s been so bad,” he mumbled.
“But even so. You had savings, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said absently. “Yes. I thought there was more.” He shook his head. “I just need a little time,” he muttered.
“Never mind that,” she frowned. “Do you mean there should have been more in the strongbox?”
“Yes, of course.” He hesitated, shook his head again. “I can’t understand it,” he said awkwardly.
“Could someone have stolen the money?”
“Oh no. I don’t think so.” He seemed confused.
“Who knows where you keep the box?”
“No one except you and me. And Ducket.” He frowned. “No one stole it.”
“Then why isn’t there any money?” she demanded. But still the grocer had no answer.
Two days later, Bull took his daughter Tiffany into his confidence.
“I’ve had Dame Barnikel here,” he explained. “She came to ask me if I had ever had any indication that young Ducket might be a thief.” He looked at Tiffany seriously. “I know you used to be fond of him, but I want you to search your mind very carefully. Can you think of anything he has ever said or done that might suggest he has these tendencies?”
“No, Father.” She thought for a moment. “I really can’t.”
“Dame Barnikel thinks,” Bull went on, “that there’s been a theft and that Fleming may be protecting the boy.” He pursed his lips. “On no account must you mention this to anyone, especially Ducket. Dame Barnikel’s going to keep an eye on him. If he’s innocent, there’s no need to say anything more. Let’s hope he is.” He shook his head. “But you never know with a foundling. Bad blood. . . .”
The only other person to whom, after some thought, Bull mentioned this painful subject was Silversleeves. He trusted the young man’s discretion; but he also reasoned that, since Ducket had embarrassed the lawyer, Silversleeves might well choose to remember if there were any rumours about the apprentice. But the lawyer, after a few moments’ pause, gave an answer that, it seemed to Bull, was greatly to his credit.
“I’ve no reason to like the fellow, sir,” he said. “But I’ve never heard that said of him. He may be foolhardy, but I think he’s honest.” He looked at Bull. “Don’t you?”
But Bull could only shrug.
“I shall pray for him,” said Silversleeves.
It was the spring of 1380 when Amy noticed that Ben Carpenter had something on his mind. At first he seemed unwilling to confide in her, but when he did, she was taken aback. For it seemed that Carpenter was worried about God.
In fact, the solemn craftsman’s concern was not so strange; in the last few years, the question of religion had often been on men’s lips, not only in the religious houses but in the streets and taverns of London. The cause of this unusual interest, however, was a rather unlikely figure: a quiet, middle-aged scholar of modest attainments at the still infant university of Oxford. His name was John Wyclif.
At first Wyclif’s views had not been outrageous. If he complained about corrupt priests, so had all Church reformers for centuries. But gradually he had evolved more dangerous doctrines. “All authority,” he pointed out, “comes from God’s Grace, not from Man. If evil kings may be deposed by the Church, then why not corrupt bishops and even popes too?” And if this displeased the Church authorities, it only provoked the Oxford scholar to be more extreme. “I cannot even accept,” he declared, “that the miracle of the Mass takes place when the hands of the priest are impure.”
This was shocking. Yet it was another of his conclusions that really infuriated the Church. “It cannot be right,” he decided, “that the scriptures may only be interpreted to the faithful by often sinful priests. Hasn’t God the power to speak directly to every man? Why shouldn’t the people read the scriptures for themselves?”
This would never do. The Catholic Church had always reserved for its preachers the right to declare the Word of God to their flock. “Besides,” it was asserted, “the Bible is in Latin, and therefore beyond the comprehension of ordinary folk.” It was to this that Wyclif made his most outrageous response.
“Then I will translate it into English.”
It was not surprising that Wyclif was popular with the Londoners. Though Holy Church had dominated the medieval world for centuries, never before had her presence in the city been so pervasive. Dark old St Paul’s loomed over everything; there was a church in almost every street, whole areas of the city were given over to the huge walled monasteries, convents and hospitals of the various orders and the fine houses and gardens of abbots and bishops graced the suburbs. Men, most men anyway, believed in God, in heaven and in hellfire. Guilds and individual merchants, more than ever, were endowing chantry chapels in churches, where Masses would be said for their souls. Every spring, the taverns of Southwark saw bands of pilgrims on their way to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury.
But the Church was also worldly. It owned a third of England. On any day in the streets, one could see portly Blackfriars, and even Franciscan Greyfriars, who lived too well and preached too little. There were priests who sold pardons; there were scandalous convents. And in recent years, the Church had been split once again, with two rival popes each claiming the other was an impostor, or even an Antichrist. Like any huge and powerful institution, the Church was a natural target for satire. This cheeky fellow Wyclif from Oxford appealed to the Londoners’ robust common sense. It was all summed up by Dame Barnikel one evening when she eyed a portly Blackfriar who was drinking in the George and remarked:
“If this fellow Wyclif translates the Bible, Fatty, I’m going to find out what you’ve been hiding from me.”
The Church declared Wyclif a heretic; Oxford censured him. But that was all. John of Gaunt himself, who enjoyed irritating bishops, gave the reformer his protection. And so Wyclif quietly continued his work, with other scholar friends, preparing an English Bible.
Most Londoners cheerfully agreed with Wyclif, but Carpenter thought about these matters more seriously. In the long hours, when he stood at his archery practice or laboured at his woodwork, the quiet craftsman had been turning everything over in his mind.
“Something bad is going to happen,” he warned Amy. “I don’t know what it is, but God will probably send a sign.”
But he continued to go about his work; he courted her as usual. Whatever storms might be brewing, it seemed to the girl that their own little ship sailed on, sound and steady as usual. At times, she wondered if Carpenter brooded too much, but she knew that she could rely on him.
Young Duc
ket had continued to lead a carefree life. For some time, unknown to the talkative Whittington, he had enjoyed the favours of Sister Olive. Gaining confidence, he also slept nowadays with several other women in the town. But certain things puzzled him. Though business in the market was better and Fleming seemed more cheerful, he would still disappear from time to time, and on one of these occasions Ducket found him the next morning, his eyes bloodshot and his hand bandaged from a severe burn. “An accident,” he had muttered, but declined to say more. Stranger yet was the behaviour of Dame Barnikel. While Amy was friendly enough, her mother seemed to have changed towards him. Her eyes were watchful. She was cold. He had no idea why.
But he did not allow these matters to worry him. If people around him behaved oddly, he accepted it cheerfully. In less than two years, his apprenticeship would end, and then he would have to make serious decisions. Until then, he thought, I might as well enjoy myself.
During the year there had been another disastrous expedition to France. The council chose the Archbishop of Canterbury to be chancellor that year, and that well-meaning but not very wise man, faced with a huge bill, decided with Parliament to levy another poll tax. But this one was to be different. Instead of making a small levy on the poorer folk and a high one on the rich, the archbishop for some reason designed a flat rate tax. The rich would pay proportionately less; the poor, three times as much as they had before – an entire shilling a head.
“We shall actually pay less,” Dame Barnikel pointed out to her family, “because we were well enough off to be assessed high last time. But do you realize what this means for the peasant? A shilling for himself. Another for his wife. Say they have a fifteen-year-old daughter still at home. She counts as an adult. Another shilling. Altogether, several weeks’ wages. How the devil are they going to find that?” She shook her head. “Bad business.”
On a December day, in 1380, when the city was covered with snow and the river rushed silently under London Bridge, Ducket, dressed in thick woollens, was just approaching the small church of St Magnus by the bridge’s northern entrance when he saw them coming towards him. They were both wearing rich, fur-trimmed cloaks and fur hats; they were walking side by side, and laughing. Silversleeves and Tiffany were so taken with each other that they did not notice him.
It was some time since he had seen Tiffany. Ever since his conversation with Silversleeves he had kept to his policy and paid her only occasional visits as a reminder of their childhood friendship. “You’ll be married long before I am,” he had once cheerfully remarked to her.
The long-nosed young man, his face flushed in the cold, looked almost handsome. Tiffany’s face was turned up to his, and her eyes were shining with amusement. A moment later, they saw him. There was not a trace of awkwardness in Tiffany’s smile, but only kindness; and in Silversleeves’s greeting, the comfortable jocularity of a man who, lucky in love, meets another man who cannot possibly be a rival. And wasn’t it natural? Wasn’t the lawyer a clever young fellow of good family, with a fine future before him – a worthy husband who had every right to this charming girl upon whom Ducket had no claim at all?
Why then, as they passed on, should the apprentice suddenly have felt such violent, astonishing emotion? A flash of warmth, an instant of the most complete and certain knowledge: she was the one.
But it was impossible. He had no right. It was pointless. He could not, he would not, fall in love with Tiffany Bull.
It was the eve of St Lucy’s, the winter solstice, the midnight of the year. A long, deep night, dark as nothingness, in which all manner of things might be concealed: which was as well, for behind these tightly closed shutters was concealed no ordinary mystery, nothing less than the secret of the universe itself.
That the secret of the universe was, at present, within the city’s bounds, was due to a minor alteration of geography. For with the passing of time, the city limits had progressed well beyond its ancient walls. At various points along the approach roads, these new boundaries were marked by chains across the road to force the traffic to halt and pay tolls. These gateways were known as the city bars. On the western side there were two: about half a mile out from Ludgate, on the lane now called Fleet Street by the old precincts of the Knights Templar, lay Temple Bar. A similar distance out from Newgate, was Holborn Bar.
It was here, between the Holborn and Temple Bars, that the most learned men in London were gathered together, in the lawyers’ quarter. There had been hostels, known as Inns, for lawyers in the vicinity for a long time. But in recent decades, the ever-increasing number of legal men had been flocking to the area like gathering starlings. Already some of their communal lodgings and schools were acquiring permanent names: Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn; even the Temple precincts too, their crusading order having been disbanded, were now leased to these sharp-eyed and chattering fellows. Down the centre of this quarter, running from Holborn southwards to Fleet Street, was the narrow thoroughfare known as Chancery Lane. And it was by Chancery Lane, in a small lodging on the upper floor whose windows, had they not been shuttered, would have given out on a tiny, enclosed courtyard, that the secret of the universe, like some subtle legal contract, was being minutely investigated to see what it could yield.
Fleming watched spellbound, his concave face turned towards the glowing coals in the fire, as the dark figure before him went about his work. The Sorcerer wore a black robe on which were sewn, in golden thread, images of the sun, moon and planets. On a table in the centre of the room was a score or so of bowls, jars, phials, beakers and retorts. As the Sorcerer moved about, at one moment he seemed like some strange and dangerous bird, at another like a priest at his devotions; but always his ministrations were awesome and hypnotic.
“You have the mercury?”
Trembling, the grocer handed over a little phial which contained two ounces of the liquid metal.
“That is good.” The Sorcerer nodded his approval. Then, very carefully, he measured out one ounce, which he transferred to a small earthenware crucible. “See to the fire,” he ordered.
Obediently taking the bellows, Fleming stoked the fire while the other hovered over the table.
With what care the Sorcerer went about his work. From one bowl he took iron filings, from another, quicklime; to these he added saltpetre, tartar, alum; brimstone, burnt bones, and moonwort from a jar. Then a miraculous powder, hugely costly, whose ingredients he would never divulge; and lastly, as though in kindly recognition of his visitor’s calling, he ground up one of the precious peppercorns the grocer had brought him the week before, and added that too. For another five minutes, his face half in shadow, he mixed and warmed this magical brew until, finally satisfied, he reverently poured a little of it into a phial and, turning, allowed his eyes solemnly to rest on the concave face of his pupil.
“It is ready,” he softly intoned. Little Fleming felt his breath grow short.
“You are sure?” he ventured.
The alchemist nodded.
“It is the Elixir,” he whispered.
No wonder Fleming trembled. In the Elixir was the secret of the universe. And now, oh dear heavens, they were going to make gold.
The art or science of alchemy in the medieval world was based upon a very simple principle. Just as the celestial spheres rose in order towards the vault of heaven, just as there were orders of angels from the mere winged messengers to the radiant seraphim who dwelt beside the Godhead, so every element in the natural world was arranged in a divine order, ascending from the grossest to the most pure.
Thus with metals too. The philosophers recognized seven metals, each corresponding with a planet: lead for Saturn, tin for Jupiter; for copper, Venus, for iron, Mars, Mercury and its planet shared a name, silver for the Moon and gold, purest of all, for the effulgent Sun.
But here was the wonderful mystery: with the passing of time, no man knew how long, the warmth of the Earth would gradually refine each of these metals, stage by stage, into a purer form: iron into mercury,
mercury into silver until at last, at the very end of time, all should finally have passed into purest gold, their ultimate and perfect state.
“But what,” the philosophers asked, “if a way could be found to hasten the process, to sublimate a base metal from its gross condition into its purest golden form?” And so it was not surprising that, just as men sought cures by making pilgrimages to shrines, or knights in stories sought the Holy Grail, so the men of science known as alchemists sought some substance that would cause metals to transform themselves from their base to their purest state. This magical stuff, whatever it might be, must surely contain the secret of the universe. It was known as the Elixir or the Philosophers’ Stone.
And Silversleeves had found it.
It was five years since Benedict Silversleeves had become a practitioner of the magic art of alchemy, and Fleming was only one of a number of clients – each of whom believed that he alone shared the secret – who were greatly in awe of him. For he was very good at it. Not only could he astonish even learned men with his knowledge, but he really could transform base metals into precious. At least, all his clients thought he did, for they had seen him do it.
The actual performance of the miracle was very simple; and though he had devised many cunning variants of the trick, Silversleeves always favoured the easiest of all. This was what he did now.
Pouring a few drops of the Elixir into the crucible, he placed the latter on the fire. Watching it earnestly he began to stir it with a long, thin stick. As a special concession, for a moment or two he even allowed the grocer to stir as well. What Fleming did not know was that inside the stick, before he arrived, Silversleeves had inserted granules of purest silver, held in with a little wax filling at the tip of the stick. As the crucible was stirred, the wax melted and the granules of silver ran out. It was a trick that could be performed with any metal.
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